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Ask a Porn Star: Specifics, sex with strangers

In which super sexy porn people answer questions -- each week -- from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here.Mediated by Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is local celebrity, Lorelei Lee. Lee specializes in fetish porn (water torture, whips-n-chains, electrocution, etc.) and has a blossoming side-career as a writer. Check out some of her movies/pics here.

Tony T:What does a porn director tell you to do? How specific does he/she get?

Lee: Sometimes we get very specific direction, exact positions and order of actions. Sometimes the scenes are scripted. But the majority of my work is what’s called “gonzo” porn – which basically means it’s all sex, no plot. In most of these scenes, I get a basic premise for the scene, a set-up, and a few specific actions. For example, if the film is called “Anal Nurse Whores,” we definitely will be expected to wear stethoscopes (just kidding) – and then we are given free-reign. Most of my performances are improv within specific parameters.

Nick H:What's it like when you have to have sex with someone you find repelling and/or obviously has nothing but contempt for you?

Lee: I can’t think of any time when I’ve had sex with someone who has “nothing but contempt for me.” Even if someone did actually have contempt for the person they are performing with, it would just be unprofessional not to hide it. For the most part, the people I work with are very polite and our interactions are similar to the interactions of co-workers in any professional environment. That is, we may not have exactly chosen to spend time together, but we have enough in common based on our similar work experiences that we can usually get along pretty well.

Two other thoughts:

I have occasionally worked with someone I actually disliked – in which case, I am a terrific actress. I think it can sometimes be jarring for new performers to learn to separate sex and affection. Sometimes my co-workers and I do have affection for each other (if we are friends), but frequently we’re strangers who meet on-set a few minutes before the performance. We are polite, but not affectionate. I think if you’ve grown up, as many people have, being told that love and sex are inherently intertwined, it can be difficult to reconcile an experience in which the person you’ve just had sex with treats you with the distance of a stranger. But in porn, this kind of polite distance is completely appropriate. We are likely to be working with someone else the next day or even that afternoon; performing is hard enough work as is, it would be twice as exhausting if we made an “emotional connection” with every person we worked with. This is not the same as having sex with someone you don’t like, but I think for some people it can take getting used to.